Outer Limits 4x4 Board

I got one of those cheapo pipe benders a while ago.

I was stuffing around with it for the first time the other day just seeing how it bent. I was using heavy wall pipe and it wouldnt bend nice at all.

Anyone used one and managed to get decent looking bends from it? Any special tricks?

ive heard packing the tube with sand and welding caps on the end for the bend helps a bit

Doing that will help reduce the crushing effect but it will be a bit harder to bend and it also helps if you can compress the sand inside as much as possible. I do a bit of a bend on the end of the tube that I'll be cutting off as I like to believe that this will reduce the voids in the pipe.

I built my cage, sliders ect ect with one of those cheap benders, the trick is the wall thickness, type of pipe and size of pipe.
I used black steel pipe with a wall of 3.6 mm I think, and the pipe has to fit tight in the die, fitting tight is most important.
Black steel pipe is heavy and dont comply with new rules as a roll cage.

All the bar work on the rear of POS's rig have been done with one of those and it worked fine.It did kink a little on some bends but for the price there is no way i would spend $695 for a speedworks bender and then $650 for one set of dies for it. I think Adrian paid $200 for his.

I was usin 60mm OD black pipe with a wall thickness close to 4mm and using the 2" die. The tight fit in the die helped reduce flattening of the pipe, or so I like to think.

I have done a few cages with an cheap pipe bender, the trick is to get the right size die for the pipe.

Although a mates Hydraulic bender which you just punch in the Degrees was Easier :(

Steve

Steve that is not nice rubbing it in like that

with i still had the access to a bender like that :(

A mate in the Ag industry had it, could do a cage in a day :( That and a Nice 3 Phase mig :(


Steve

Still on my shopping list - so I'm reading with much interest

Also if you use a seamless pipe it has less chance of kinking which is what cages have to be made out of. I used this pipe and i think out of about 30 bends 2 kinked.The die has to be tight fit though.

The speedworx one works really well, provided the tube isn't too thin. They pay for themselves if you get all the mates who borrow it to donate a carton of beer. The Speederworx notcher/ cutter is pretty good too, but the suplied holesaws are too shallow.

Laim,

Where are these available from and what's the $$damage likely to be??

Wooders,( your in Sydney right? ) .
Cost is one carton per weekend
0414 652769.

liam i might have to take you up on that aswell

Liam wrote:Wooders,( your in Sydney right? ) .
Cost is one carton per weekend
0414 652769.

Hmm now that's a good price....I'll be keeping that in mind

Liam, what are the Speedworx bender and knotcher like.
Im thinking of getting then.

The benders good, it drags the tube around a die rather than forcing a die into it like the cheapies, gives a good result unless you use really thin wall stuff. The notchers pretty good too, but the hole saws it comes with aren't deep enough if your cutting at more than a 45 degree angle. ( when the current ones worn out I'll invest in a longer jobby.) The die's for the different radius bends and different size tube are expensive though.

The dies are the same price as the bender, his reason is that they are CNC machined, I thought that would make it cheaper as after programing he can bang them out.

You can use the inner half of the die ( the curved bit ) with smaller outers for example I use the 1.75 inch inner die with the supplied 1.75 inch outer as well as a 1.5 and a 1 inch outer ( home made) .

Cheezy, we did some welding work for a guy about 2 weeks ago and he used to build custom mandrel tube bending dies for most machines currently available.
He told us he can build any dies we might want for any tube bender. he would probably need some sort of drawing though I suppose.
If you like, I can give you his name and number.
Regards Andrew.

That would be good Andrew as Im hurting paying $670 per set of dies. :(

BTT

due to the prohibitive costs of existing benders, i'm considering building my own using the rorty 2 plans found here: http://home.iprimus.com.au/rorty/conten ... _plans.htm

has anybody done this? a manual bender is really simple so the only expensive part would be to have the dies made. andrew, can you pm me the contact you mentioned. thanks.

Whats the cost of getting it professionaly done if you tell them the messurements and and supply the materials it cant be too much can it?